Smartbook G138 is here!!!

Man, I've been keeping it from you guys for three weeks, and it was hard! Well, ok it only arrived for a few days, since I won it on eBay another two weeks before that.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am now a happy owner of a Smartbook G138.

The quick and dirty run-down:
- Size is bulkier than I thought, compared to my Jornada 728. But weight isn't too bad.
- Build quality is less than ideal. Tho it does seem reasonably sturdy. The manufacturer also make those portable DVD players, so expect similar quality.
- Screen is beautiful. Regular font sizes are a bit small, but still legible. As an example, in CE Agenda I use 14 instead of 12 pt fonts.
- Keyboard more useable than I imagined. 17 mm pitch for major keys.
- PIE6 rocks!
- No PIM sucks! But the database is there, so third party s/w that uses POOM, like CE Agenda, can still work. As long as they don't use the PO dialogs. Synchronizes with desktop just fine.
- Linksys WCF12 WiFi card works fine, using the built-in Buffalo driver.
- 128 MB RAMzilla!

Lots more to be said about this unit. I'll keep you guys updated as I go along. And maybe, just maybe, will organize myself to write a review for the site. If only Clinton will respond *hint*

How about a picture for now. Cheers!





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smartbook.jpg (70KB - 45 downloads)

*speechless*

That looks like one heck of a HPC! (still want minimo ported though )

I sense the addition of a CE 5 forum coming very soon.

Looks SOOOO Cool I love the design

All I can say is: Nice...

I wonder how it would stand up against my 900C performance-wise... It has twice the RAM, but half the processor speed... But the larger screen is definitely awesome.

Edited by surrealmonk 2005-04-04 7:48 AM

Looks great

Have you tried Bluetooth with it yet and if so with which card?

Alright Takwu! my my my ... G138. Quick, give us the usability verdict!

If only it still had the PIM...

But with buyable (and developable) software, it definitely has greater capabilities than HPC 2000. Can it run PPC 2002-2004 software?

I like. Are you trying to gain favor by taking the picture with Hpc:factor up?

Ok, to answer a few questions:

No I do not have Bluetooth on anything in my house, so I can't try it. The device doesn't come with Bluetooth. But in the Control Panel, there is a Bluetooth Device Properties, which lets you scan for other devices and pick which ones to trust. You would need a compatible Bluetooth CF card I think.

As for PPC apps... it's pretty much the same as HPCs. It does come with AYGSHELL.DLL which has a bottom menu bar for PPC apps. But you can easily find that for HPC2000 ARM devices anyway. For the ones that work, the taller resolution (800x480) is definitely helpful in displaying everything.

On the other hand, thanks to the large amounts of RAM, I can install .Net CompactFramework, so it should run those apps. However it doesn't guarantee it won't crash the ones that are designed for PPCs; it's just another option to try.

There are a lot of things I haven't tried, partly because there is only one CF slot (no PCMCIA). Which means I'm mostly using the WiFi card and put everything in RAM. That will be solved soon tho, as I already tried the SanDisk Connect+ WiFi with 128MB card, which worked just fine. I just need to buy one myself.

More to come...

*edit*
Hey 660lx. It's common practice to load the mainpage in the browser when you post a device on a site. It shows that the picture was taken for this particular post, not stolen from some other site. It also gives you a good idea of how well the device works. For example, on eBay, when people post pictures of a laptop for sale or something, they would load up eBay and login, just to show it's working and the seller actually has the item.

Edited by takwu 2005-04-05 8:06 PM

you have both devices. the smartbook and the j728. tell us, which one it seems will remain by your side, and which one will sleep in the closet?

Hmm no PCMCIA, eh? That's a bit of a disadvantage... Although I guess you can get most peripherals in CF form, but that'd be annoying to have to constantly swap memory/Wifi/etc. cards...

About J728 vs G138...
It's a bit early to say, but the new(er) OS and high res TFT is too addictive to leave behind
It's true that the Jornada is quite a bit more portable. And I got it all set up to serve me as well as it can. It's just too bad that it isn't good enough. The browser still doesn't load enough websites, and doesn't display well enough for the sites that load. Gaming is another no-no; the only entertaining gaming experience I've had so far is Karateka on PocketIIe Hmmm maybe I should check out Prince of Persia...
G can surf so much better that I sometimes prefer it over my PCs. Can't say that for J. I haven't tried gaming on G, but the TFT refreshes much faster, so at least that problem is fixed. On the other hand, G is missing the PIM, which is still a big issue on my list of things to do. I'm sure in time I will get it worked out tho.

So my choice is the Smartbook. However, that's just my personal preference. J is still a better PDA for a lot of reasons, mentioned or otherwise.

The G on the other hand, can easily be KO'd by the Netbook Pro, if it wasn't for the pricing.

yeah, i love the netbook pro too. but i like the size of the J, because like you said, it makes it more like a PDA. it also allows me to do more things with it more comfortably...like mp3, and voice recording. also more portable like you said...

i also like the built quality of the J, i don't think that smartbook company can match it. i'm just guessing however since i never held a smartbook in my hand...

anyways...just let us know if anything changes and something else ends up in the closet.

thanks,

hmmm. takwu, do you mean the G138 is as fast with surfing as a real PC? (and i'm not talking about a Pentium I)
i got closer to that with netfront, but... anyway it's ok, i"m just amazed that the G138 is this good.

About surfing.
No it's not as fast as a XP machine But it's good enough. Afterall it doesn't take much computing power to run a good browser at good speed. The extra RAM here helps quite a lot.

One thing I sometimes do when surfing is to open up another window to look up a webpage quickly, while typing something on another page. On a PC, you almost don't feel any slow down; perhaps some disk access if you are low on RAM. On CE, there's a long pause everytime I switch browser windows, to rearrange the memory I guess. This process is too much for the Jornada to handle, and sometimes even hangs the poor guy. On the Smartbook it is a 2 second delay, which is quite acceptable in real use. Actually I think it's impressive given it's slow RISC processor, same as the Jornada.

About the Netbook Pro.
I regret a bit about saying the Smartbook getting KO'd. Afterall, the Smartbook is much smaller in size and weight. It's true that regarding features, it is inferior, but for these devices, portability is usually more important. I will post pictures comparing the Jornada, Smartbook, and maybe Picturebook, when I get the time.